


My Empire of Dirt

by pyreios



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Gen, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, chapter six spoilers, mostly me being introspective, please read this im so proud, theres both
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-07 10:19:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16852207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyreios/pseuds/pyreios
Summary: "I will let you down, I will make you hurt "-Hurt, covered by Johnny CashEveryone in camp is too caught up in their own damned shit to realise, to notice, to take a moment and wonder why Arthur looks so frail, so fragile, why his coughing stains red against his pillow and keeps him up throughout the night.Charles does. He notices and he comments and he takes Arthur’s hands in his own and kisses him, refuses to listen as Arthur’s protests fill the air with “I don’t want you sick, Charles, I cant let you become like this.” Charles takes his risks where he deems them most important, and he has never found anything so completely, significantly consuming as the way he feels, he reacts, to Arthur.





	My Empire of Dirt

He is dying.

There is no way around this, no heist that could save him, no amount of money that could fuel a formulated plan to rescue him from the damnation brought upon him for beating a poor man to death. He is dying, and it is his karma for the terrible things he’s done in his wretched, loyal life on earth.

He misses Hosea, he thinks, staring at the dominoes table that he would sit at all morning, crushing ginseng in a stone bowl, daily makings of medicine. He was always prepared, that Hosea. Always quick with disarming words and curing liquids, the only man with the ability to sate Dutch’s sanity, the only man whom Arthur could thank his favorite things for. His journals, his pencils, his writing and his drawings and every tiny thing he appreciates kep curled up in his satchel.

Hosea taught him all that. Taught him to find beauty.

He was a better father than Arthur probably deserved.

Nobody talks about Hosea. Nobody talks about Sean, about Keiran and Lenny and Molly, Davey, Jenny, Mac. They're People who once were, forbidden whispers barred from leaving criminal lips. Arthur wonders if that’ll be him in the future, a ghost of a presence that leave people’s shoulders cold. No amount of time spent in the gang can save a man from his name being banned from human words. Arthur will become a semblance of a thought, a wisp of an idea kept stewing in people’s emotions.

He is dying, and he wishes he wasn't. He doesn’t want to end up like the others, so unceremonious in their ends, so _mundane_ and uninspiring. He doesn’t want to end up forgotten. Maybe it’s why he writes in his journal, why he pours in drawings and stories and musings of everyone he has ever met. They are not forgotten, caught in between charcoal lines of his unpretty words. He will be forgotten.

 

Charles asks for more and more of his attention.

Invites him out hunting under the guise of rations for Pearson. When Charles is not occupied helping the Wapiti people, he is always found near Arthur, with Arthur, staring at Arthur. Everyone in camp is too caught up in their own damned shit to realise, to notice, to take a moment and wonder why Arthur looks so frail, so fragile, why his coughing stains red against his pillow and keeps him up throughout the night.

Charles does. He notices and he comments and he takes Arthur’s hands in his own and kisses him, refuses to listen as Arthur’s protests fill the air with _“I don’t want you sick, Charles, I cant let you become like this.”_ Charles takes his risks where he deems them most important, and he has never found anything so completely, significantly consuming as the way he feels, he reacts, to Arthur.

Charles would ride out with him regardless of any circumstance, but he finds himself anticipating it _more,_ initiating it _more,_ learning the way Arthur speaks, Arthur acts, everything he could possibly soak up in a semblance to know _more_ before it is too late.

Charles finds an old picture of Arthur, Dutch and Hosea. Its on the ground near Arthur’s tent, and he picks it up to make sure it does not get trampled.

They look far younger then the years have done to them. Arthur’s jaw is still slimmed, clean shaven, face free of any wrinkles that have made home to his face. He can’t be more than twenty in the picture. Dutch stands in the middle, Hosea to Arthur’s right. Charles has a hard time recognizing any of them, the wear wiped clean and the terror of a life running void of their eyes. Charles muses that he would have liked to know them when they were younger. Know how far they’ve come besides the stories Arthur confides in him.

Maybe he'd finally understand.

When he hands the picture to Arthur the next morning, relief floods his face and his fingers linger on Charles’ own.

 

Arthur begs Sadie to help him get John out. She can see the wear in the creases of his eyes, the painstaking loyalty in the way his voice is frenzied, terrified in the deepest corners of his words.

John is Arthur’s brother. His family, and though he denies its existence, the love he feels for a brother long abandoned. He is dying, and it’s hard for her to look at, the only person she feels she can trust in this god-forsaken warzone. He is her reason for staying, she knows.

Watching him rattle off a cough while he talks to her has her chest hurting, has her watching her best friend fight back death’s bony grasp.

“If they get out-” He looks so vulnerable, so dead on his feet. “This might all've meant something, if they can make it. I just need you to promise me that you’ll help me when the time comes. You and me… We’re more ghosts than people. John has a family, has Abigail and Jack. They can have more than this god damned empire of dirt we’ve built ourselves.”

Sadie lands a hand on his shoulder, locks in his eyes and nods with all the weight of the world. “Of course I will, Arthur. You can count on me.” She doesn’t want to change the subject, but time is ticking away for both him, her, for the O’Driscolls. She asks him if its a bad time, if he wants to meet her later. He stops her, tells her he'd gladly go through hell and back for her. She says the same.

“Thank you,” he rasps. “Let’s ride out.”

 

Dutch hasn't called Arthur his son in so long.

Arthur mentions it in the cold mornings of 4 AM huddled on the right side of an expensive bed in the Saint Denis saloon. Charles had tried to convince him to come closer, sleep in an embrace they may not have more much longer, but Arthur was too caught up in his hauntings to listen.

“Hosea used to call me it alot. Before Blackwater, I mean. Used to call him Pa before everything went to shit around us. Then, we just never had time. Dutch, though. He never failed but its been so long, Charles. My word used to be enough for him and now he can barely give me a second glance. I wonder if it was all just a game to him. A plan. He ain't been right since Hosea died.“

Charles turns over and buries his face into Arthur's neck, slings an arm around him and pulls him close. “Are you okay?“ He asks, lacking a better question, a better consolation. Arthur hums, is silent for a good few minutes. Charles waits for him to answer, focuses on steady breathing instead.

“No. Not really. Im dying, Charles. I don’t think I _can_ be okay anymore.” Charles nods, feels a little useless. Arthur turns around in his embrace and stares at him, all reddenning blue eyes and furrowed eyebrows.

“I guess all you can do is try to be.”

Arthur doesn’t say anything else. Charles can't tell if hes asleep or just silent, but he doesnt break the calm blanket of unsettled thats filled the room. He doesnt know when slumber becomes of him, but when he wakes up Arthur is dressed, staring out the window. The bed is cold.

“I think I’ve come ta terms with it,” Arthur’s voice is rough with the rising sun, white handkerchief splattered red lying on the windowsill beside him. “The fact I’m dying. I’ve always run the risk of it. I can see that with the faces of everyone we’ve lost. I’ve never been particularly safe from death but this...” Arthur sighs.

Charles sits up on the bed, roots around for wherever his shirt had been thrown last night.When his shirt is on, he looks up at Arthur,  waits to see if there is more. “I’m still afraid, Charles. I ain’t think of death as something like this. I ain’t never think there’s a possibility I could go like this.” Charles gets up, sits on his knees before Arthur and takes his hands.

“I don't know much about what you're feeling, or what kind of afterlife you believe in, or whatever you think is going to happen. But you're a good man, Arthur Morgan. Whether you think so or not.” Arthur cries, and Charles is not sure what to do. That seems to happen alot lately, playing witness for something too far out of the realms of his power to fix.

“I'm tryin’, Charles. I've been makin’ amends, trying to be a better man.” Charles lays his head in Arthur's lap and stares at the wall, hands still intertwined.

“You're trying. That's all anyone can ask of you, you know that? It's the trying that matters most.” Arthur doesn't answer after that. He seems to go quite alot more. Charles doesn't mind, just sits there, ear against Arthur's jeans and bare hands grasping leather-clad ones.

 

The first time he talks about his son in years is that ride with Rains Fall.

Charles had asked him to help. Charles had spent time with the Wapiti tribe, learned their misfortune and helped them survive longer, help them keep their roots. Dutch talks to Eagle Flies, and Charles stops him near the river and asks him to help Rains Fall. Arthur would have gone anyways, but he does not say this. Only finds Charles’ shoulder with his hands, and agrees.

Rains Fall kindly listens, kindly gives him wisdom that can only be imparted through years of life, years of surviving. He gives him components for a medecine, for a small relief in the otherwise painful life he has been living.

He wonders, faintly, if dying will allow him to see his son again, to see Eliza and apologize to her, for never being there, for never being a father or a provider, for being gone when they died. Apologize for being so hung up on Dutch’s sugary words of promise, and Mary’s kind eyes, for never settling down, even when she asked and Isaac cried when his pa left until the next month.

The rest of the ride is full of the sharp crack of hooves hitting the pavement. Arthur stares, focused on the back of Rains Fall’s head in a melancholic stupor.

He feels nothing but anger when Rains Fall comes across his sacred place, the place he so graciously allowed Arthur the glimpse to see. It is not fair that these people suffer while the Army profits off their misfortune.

Rains Fall asks him to retrieve the pipe, and Arthur goes without a second glance, no hesitation needed. He leaves everyone alive per Rains Fall’s request, though he wonders if the soldiers would be better off dead, decaying in the dirt where they pay for the misfortune and torture they so easily thrust upon these people.

“You are a good man.” Arthur nods, tips his hat.

“I’m only doin’ what’s right, sir.”  
Rains Fall offers his a reward, a compensation, and he muses something must have changed in him, because he refuses it, insists he was only doing what needed to be done, he really can’t take it. A younger Arthur may have taken the reward. A younger Arthur may not have done it in the first place.

He doesn’t think about that.

 

On the way out towards the bridge, Arthur tells John something _big_ is coming. “When I give you the signal, whenever that may be, I need you and Abigail and Jack to be ready, John.” John stares at him as the push the cart, confused and quizzical.

“What’s this about, Arthur?”

“Dutch ain’t right, Marston, you know that. He ain’t our Pa anymore.” John’s eyes catches his, and the both look down, keep pumping. “Something bad is coming, and you can survive. Your family is the best bet for us to save some people. I already got Sadie helpin’ me, just make sure Abigail is packed and ready.”

John stops the cart, stares at him heavy. “Why are you doin’ this, Arthur? Why not save yourself?” Arthur refuses to meet his eyes, squares his shoulders and begins carrying the dynamite to the side of the bridge.

Arthur goes back for the next box, as John begins his descent down the ladder. The dynamite is lowered, and Arthur joins John on the underside of the bridge. “I’m long gone, Marston. I ain’t got much time left.” He opens the containers. “You’re my little brother,” he whispers, just quiet enough that they can have plausible deniability, that it may never leave the space they have created for them. “There’s no one I love more than you. If you and yer family can get out,” Arthur finally looks at him, somber, and John thinks he looks oddly alot like Hosea, considering they were related in all ways but blood. “Then the dream ain’t never truly gonna be dead.”

 

“I’m going to stay and help these people move.”

The oil factory is gone, dead and burned. Eagle Flies is dead, and it leaves a weight in Arthur’s chest that he just can’t seem to shake.

Arthur nods. He knew it would happen at some point, Charles leaving. He is healthy, alive and still vaguely young, still has much of a life yet. At some point his morals no longer lined up with the serenity Dutch had promised. It was a matter of time, and the time has come.

Charles waits until they have reached the outskirts of camp to hug him, holds tight and close and tries to convince himself that it is not the last time he will ever see Arthur alive. Arthur pulls back, cuts it short, and Charles feels the bile of panic in his throat, he isn’t _ready,_ its all too _soon_ , it was never supposed to happen like _this._ Arthur is rooting around in his satchel, brows furrowed and the thin line of his lips pulled into a frown.

He presses something small, something glinting and shiny into Charles’ hand. “Take this,” he whispers, like it’s a promise between them. Charles looks at it, tears in his eyes and pain in his chest, and think it just might be one. “To remember me by. So you don’t forget.”

Charles kisses him, and it feels like _home._ How cruel that the one place he has come to belong is ripped headlong from his grasp. The ring is slipped on his finger, a little tight, a little uncomfortable, but there. It’s there. “I don’t think I could ever forget you, Arthur Morgan.”

Arthur hums, pulls from Charles’ overwhelming embrace, and mounts his horse. Carmine whinnies from underneath him. His voice is gruff with unshed tears when he replies, melancholy dripping from his mouth. “I love you, Charles Smith.”

Charles wishes the first exchange of those words could’ve been at a better time, would have been lounging in a hotel somewhere, laughing over some dumb joke Arthur had overhead from Uncle. Instead, they are the harbinger of death, the herald of destruction. Charles stops him with a hand on his leg, looks up, all brown eyes soft with a tired sadness.

“I love you too.” It makes Arthur smile, just barely. “If you survive, look me up, cowboy. Up North. I’d be glad to see you again.” The offer is empty, he knows. There is no surviving what comes.

Nonetheless, Arthur accepts before he rides off, and Charles is once again alone.

 

“What about the money?” Arthur shouts over the roar of gunshots, the churning of the wind and rain around them. Arthur is shaking, looks so _thin_ and dead, ragged and worn down. John shakes his head, points in the direction of the rocky cliffs.

“It’s too dangerous! Go back if that’s what you want, but I _need to go_ !” Arthur takes one last look behin dhim, shakes his head and stalks forward. The decision is a split-second panic, a split-second too _long,_ but it is made when Arthur gets to him.

“Nah. I’m helpin’ you escape.” Arthur clasps John on the shoulder, uses the momentum to push himself up and swing over the first rock to climb. John watches his big brother long gone fight his way up a cliff to save him, sacrifice the end of his life to make sure John gets the life they used to sit around the fires and dream about, even as he dies from an illness that has consumed him.

Arthur deserves a good life more then John ever could. John vows they will get out together, if he has any say. Too sad he was always bad with words.

 

Arthur hands over everything, his hat and his satchel, his heart along with it. Everything he has made for himself, built himself, is in that satchel, in the bullet holes of his hat. It’s all John’s know, his legacy to be carried on. He wishes it was more.

Arthur begins his way forward, back to the shooting.

“Arthur.”

A pause. He turns, finds John staring at him with tears in his eyes. He has never looked more like the fifteen year old boy Arthur remembers long ago. John hugs him, so unlike him, so foreign, but it feels like the farewell he always wanted. It’s nasty that their reunion, their forgiveness was so stubborn that it took facing down death to ignite. It’s happening, though, and it makes Arthur feel like a fool. He should of forgiven him the day he came back.

“You’re my brother,” John says, and Arthur knows he means growing up together, learning to swim and read and write together. Means the way Arthur used to spend hours teaching him to ride his horse. Means he won’t be forgotten, won’t be written off as just someone he knew. He means brothers, their bond so much deeper then blood could ever run.

Arthur lets go, smiles through the blood that threatens to spill out his throat.

“I know.”

 

“Duuuuutch…” Arthur is sore, is hurt. He doesn’t know if he’s calling out to make him listen, or because he’s so scared, so terrified, so _hurt_ , that he just wants his father back to tell him it’ll be okay. His heart thrums in his ears, hard to hear over the silence enveloping the clifftop. “I gave you everything I _had_ …” he can’t move, not even to roll over, can barely speak over the feel opf congested lungs and blood crawling up his throat. The “I did,” he promises when he finds Dutch’s eyes is carried away by the wind, ignored and hurt.

“John made it out,” he groans, doesn’t know if he’s spiting Ducth and Micah, or reassuring himself. It shouldn’t have only been the Marston’s, should have been _All_ of them, should have been everyone who died and everyone who lived as the family they promised they always were, should of been what Dutch promised Arthur when he was a 16 year old boy feeling asleep on a wagon in between the two men he called ‘father.’

“I tried to be good in the end.” He doesn’t much know who he’s talking about, but he’s afraid that if he stops he will die. Maybe he’s talking to memories, what remains of Hosea, of Charles and John and Sadie in that occupy his mind. He wanted to be good. Wanted to be worth amemory, a lingering substance to look back on fondly. He tried _so hard_ , tried with Downes and Charlotte and Rains Fall. “I really did.”

Dutch stutters, can’t even make out a fucking word, and Arthur wonders if this is _really_ the man he gave his whole life to, the man in his journal he wrote fondly about, the man he loved like his own father.

Dutch watches him die. He walks away, stumbles, pushes past Micah after the light is long gone from Arthur’s eyes.

Arthur gave him everything, including his last breath.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is also from Hurt by nine inch nails but specifically the cover by Johnny Cash! Big Arthur song.  
> Anyways, i really really am so sad over this game ;-; I hope u liked this tho! It was mostly me being able to get my feelings out uh! Find me @pyreios on instagram and talk to me abt this game


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